My Father’s Fortune: A Life by Michael Frayn

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A tragedy so shocking and graphic cast a shadow over the life of a family - and of the playwright who now recalls it

Halfway through Michael Frayn’s childhood memoir something so awful happens
that you wonder how he emotionally survived it, or, for that matter, if he
can ever fully have done so. As he and a friend played, there was a hideous
screech from his grandmother: “Tommy, quick, it’s Vi.” His father ran
downstairs, but there was nothing he or anyone else could do. Crossing the
dining room to drink a glass of sherry, his 41-year-old mother had dropped
dead, felled by an unpredicted, unpredictable heart attack.

That was in 1945, when the future dramatist and novelist was 12, and it had